Structural issues such as housing, child support, and child welfare may place limits on fathers’ abilities to reestablish their relationships with their children. One of the major changes to father-child relationships is co-residence: In one study of 32 fathers on parole, about half of the fathers reported having lived with at least one of their minor children prior to incarceration, but less than 20% reported living with their children after release (Bahr, Armstrong, Gibbs, Harris, & Fisher, 2005). In another study of 294 men in Cleveland, Ohio, 57% of men who were fathers of minor children lived with at least one of their children before incarceration, while only 35% lived with any of their children 1 year after reentry (Visher & Courtney, 2007). A lack of co-residence may be related to (1) the quality of the relationship that the father has with the children’s primary caregiver (usually the mother); (2) rules forbidding former convicts to live in public or subsidized housing or in homes approved for relative foster care (Hairston, 2001; Festen, Waul, Solomon, & Travis, 2002; Jeffries, Menghraj, & Hairston, 2001); and (3) the possibility that other family members in the home are involved in substance use or criminal activity (Naser & Farrell, 2004; Visher & Travis, 2003), thereby endangering the father’s ability to comply with parole requirements.

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